My initial dilemma was whether to try and play a good Culture game or whether to try and play a good Austria game. I decided to go for the latter since I thought it would be more fun (and it was), but it also lead to some decisions which are not intuitively the best when aiming for a Cultural Victory.
Note: no production overflow for Utopia, no RAs, no selling or sharing of embassies (only once as an emergency to far away Darius when I was missing 25g to buy a building), and no AI Gold milking (my first DoW was on Turn 213 against Ramses as I was tired of blocking his prophets and I saw that he was sending more); but I did steal a worker from Geneva (and made peace the same turn) which I later married (no grudges apparently).
Overall comment: I think the strategy idea was good but my implementation was quite poor; I expect someone that is good at early domination to fare much better with this strategy since I tend to wait for Bombers before going on expansionist aggressive campaigns against the AI (as I did in this game); also signing RAs would help tremendously with this strategy but that means sharing embassies with early war/confrontation more likely (and again not a problem if you can juggle both early wars and building infrastructure / world wonders and quite possible with Austria where you can get lots of units via diplomatic marriage). In fact I even screwed up at some point late mid game in terms of citizen allocations ... I must have unlocked tiles to allocated specialists and then done something else and forgotten about it (see attached graph where you can see that my CPT decreases dramatically for a long time until I discovered it
... and no, I did not destroy Culture Buildings or had my Landmarks pillaged. I had 12 Landmarks and 4 Academies and burned the rest.
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1. What Social Policies did you choose and why?
i) Full Tradition: best opener in my opinion
ii) Patronage/Aesthetics: to raise the resting point with Pledge to Protect and get Friend benefits and easier allies as result of incidental quests
iii) Rationalism/Free Thought: to boost Science
iv) Full Freedom: to boost Landmark output
v) Honor/Professional Army + Patronage/Cultural Diplomacy + Rationalism/Humanism: to boost Happiness
vi) Finish Rationalism: for the free techs (I took Ecology and Telecommunication)
vii) Finish Patronage + Finish Honor: to be able and start the Utopia Project
2. Did you save Social Policies, why did you do so and what affect did this have on your strategy?
Opened Industrial Age with two Freedom Social Policies and delayed finishing Rationalism as I waited for Penicillin Tech to complete (turned out to be a waste since I was able to choose two SPs once I got there, meaning that I lost several turns of benefits from the Patronage finisher which could have gotten me a useful Great Person in the meantime). Overall I think this policy saving is just a convenience and not particularly game changing since you are ultimately sacrificing the benefit of a Social Policy now vs. a different Social Policy later. Saving more for Industrial Age might seem appealing but frankly I would not have wanted to delay any of the earlier policies (Tradition finish, Aesthetics, Free Thought) because of it.
3. What tech path did you follow and why?
Pretty standard but opened the Industrial Age with Scientific Theory before going for Archaeology and Radio. Used Oxford for Acoustics after buying a University with Education. After Radio I went for Biology (Hospital, Oil), Industrialization (Factory), Military Science (Brandenburg), Flight (Bombers), Plastics, Atomic Theory, Penicillin.
4. Terrain and initial priorities
Saw a nice desert hill to the east … drool *Petra* … so I went for it and settled there. Initial priority was meeting as many CS as possible and avoid being bothered by the other Civs (no embassies) while I build a wonderful city with an incredible amount of World Wonders (this meant high production as well as keeping ahead with tech). Used Warrior for a lot of scouting (until I had a worker ... in fact, to steal a worker, so they came back together). Scout was my second built after the Monument. Bought a second Scout as soon as I had Optics (for off-shore operations to find the missing CS #16 .... but it turned out that there were five more missing and not just one).
5. How did the lack of Ancient Ruins affect your play?
Build scout after Monument instead of the other way around. I think this feature should always be disabled, in particular if we are comparing games that people play on the same map. Frankly, I like to know I had a good strategy and maybe a lousy implementation as opposed to having been very lucky / unlucky with huts. Please keep Ancient Ruins disabled in future GOTM.
6. How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
Build the Great Library and just keep two archers and a warrior for city defence. I also dared to build the Hanging Gardens before Petra (not such a big deal to squeeze it in since Temple of Artemis was not available). Missed out on Notre Dame (to Greece), but got all the pure Culture WW and The Oracle as well.
7. How many cities did you build and how many did you decide to acquire?
Build one city and decided to acquire as many as happiness would allow either through marriage or conquest. In the end I had
27 cities, of which 12 acquired via diplomatic marriage, and 14 acquired via conquest including 5 capital cities (+5 Liberated and 1 Razed).
8. How did diplomacy go?
Very quiet initially since I did not sell or share embassies. My eastern neighbour Hiawatha eventually attacked on Turn 90. Theodora asked for my friendship which I accepted (since England was already Hostile towards me anyways and about to be wiped out by Theodora). However, Theodora backstabbed me later on. Darius was Friendly and so was Napoleon; but Darius was soon to be swallowed by Napoleon. Egypt was never on good terms with me (yes, he really hated the fact that I built more Wonders than him). Alex was Hostile from the very beginning but surprisingly turned friendly after I took Thebes at which point he even asked for a DoF which I refused since I was about to attack him. Diplo with Alex was suddenly all green because he accepted my religion in most of his cities and we fought against a common foe etc. but there must have been another reason … I wonder if it was my Bombers? In the end my only friend was Napoleon, who had swallowed Persia taken half of Egypt and been a CS bully throughout the game; had also built: The Great Wall, Himeji Castle and the Kremlin, and had the largest army on the map.
9. How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
Religion: Desert Folklore, Ceremonial Burial, Cathedrals, Rel. Community, Rel. Texts
Most important was taking Ceremonial Burial (+1 Happiness for each City following your Religion) as a Founder Belief; as Enhancer Belief Ithink that Itinerant Preachers might have been better on this map than Religious Texts; used Great Prophet from Hagia Sophia to enhance Religion.
Faith usage: Prophet, Cathedral, Missionaries, Prophet, 2x Great Artists, 2x Great Scientists, Prophet, Missionary, Prophet
Wish I had taken two more Missionaries instead of a Prophet before hitting Industrial age and used them to convert more CSs, in particular those on the island SE.
Spies: I kept recruits in the capital for anti-espionage and by the time I got a new recruit the old spy was already a special agent which I then relocated to a Cultural City-State for election rigging duty.
10. Wars and Military Campaigns
Onondaga Siege (Turns 90-173, 2 cities including capital; and you are right to laugh because it is possilby
the longest siege of a single city in all of Civ V history 
): Hiawatha attacks on Turn 90 … I only had two CBs and a Swordsman (initial warrior upgrade) and I was a bit worried … but then all I see is three warrior and two archers … seriously? So, after destroying his fierce army
I decided to go on the offensive with my two CBs and siege his capital moving in and out and heal etc. In the meantime Alex joins the party and DoWs Hiawatha on Turn 114, I upgrade my CBs to Crossbows (Turn 127) and in the meantime also had two more CBs from Geneva and a few Pikeman as well as Trebuchet. Finally, on turn 173 Onondaga falls and he even gives me his other city (Osininka).
Egypt campaign (Turns 213-234, 2 cities including capital): was planning to go after Alex next but Ramses was really annoying me sending prophets and I did not want waste Faith on an Inquisitor, and leaving units around the capital was not compatible with a credible assault on Greece. So I just captured those prophets and then moved my army west to take on of his cities with Crossbows and then the Egyptian capital with Bombers.
Hiawatha Religious Interlude (Turns 214-220): captured an Iroquois prophet and signed peace for Gold later.
Byzantium Interlude (Turns 230-236, 1 city): Theodora send two prophets towards my capital where I only have one unit stationed. No choice again and I take both prophets, and as I was moving my troops from Egypt towards Greece I captured a Byzantine city on the way and then signed peace for gold the same turn.
Greek campaign (Turns 239-244/255, 3 cities including capital): Alex DoWed Hiawatha on Turn 236 and since I had already planned to attack Alex I asked Hiawatha for some Gold in order to join the war against Alex. He offered 60g which I didn’t mind but it turned out to be a big mistake. In fact I took Athens on turn 244 which was after he singed for peace with Hiawatha and yet I could not get a peace treaty because of my agreement with Hiawatha. And so I had to keep several units in place defending Athens since Alex kept sending troops while I had urgent matters to attend elsewhere.
French campaign (Turns 250-256, 3 cities including capital + 3 Liberated): liberating Yerevan (Cultural CS) from France had been high on the priority list for some time but the reason I did not go for it after Thebes was that Napoleon was the only friend I had left at that stage + Alex had built Notre Dame, Machu Picchu and The Pyramids … all of which I thought would be a great addition to my World Wonder collection. I took Yerevan in a single turn with Bombers and a Privateer (courtesy of married Marrakesh) and then proceeded in taking three more French cities including Paris. Signed peace the next turn and got two Persian cites for that which I liberated.
Byzantine campaign (Turns 259-264, 3 cities including capital + 2 Liberated + 1 Razed): these campaigns with Bombers go pretty fast (had 15 Bombers by now); anyways, on Turn 264 I
liberated London before taking Constantinople or it would have been a domination victory.
11. Was your UA helpful?
I played the game around the UA and made an effort to get something out of it and I did. Austria has a very special UA with great potential, but one has to plan for it and adjust to it. I don’t think that I have exploited this fully but after this game I am even more convinced that a strong puppeteering approach is the most effective way to play Austria. In my opinion, if you are playing Austria, have CS neighbours and you still buy a settler then you are doing it wrong: settler alone costs 500g, and a for a little more you can get a Pop5+ city with an aqueduct, granary, library, as well as some defensive units.
Diplomatic Marriage priority: Militaristic, redundant Mercantile, Religious, Maritime; don’t bother with far away CS that are difficult to defend and move troops to/from.
Phase one (Turns 116-168; 3 marriages): just (mostly incidental) quests but no money spend on CS; was aiming to marry all suitable candidate that had been ally for 5 turns; got lucky with Budapest (they wanted Persia discovered) but not very lucky otherwise and even ended up marrying a Maritime CS out of desperation when it was my only ally (but only for a few more turns).
Phase two (Turns 223-227; 5 marriages): started dishing out Gold on CSs as soon as I had Philanthropy, but I was very much worried about Happiness since City-States had grown to population well over 10 and had a lousy variety of Lux to offer (multiples of Silk and Dyes and Monaco had nothing) so I took Professional Army first and then Cultural Diplomacy before going on a marriage spending spree on 4 redundant Mercantile + 1 Religious CS.
Phase three (Turn 244; 3 marriages): impact from marriage in phase two was half as bad as I thought and could have done it sooner since they all had Coliseums and some even Theatres; so after sitting on 30+ Happiness for several turns I finally got my last Golden Age and that same turn I married 3 Maritime CS (Capital at Pop40+ so no big loss there since my Food surplus was over 40 as well).
Last One (Turn 255; 1 marriage): Brussels, just one turn before completing CN Tower and two turns before last SP; not relevant at this stage I think and I was just being greedy.
12. Was your UU helpful?
Hussars are quite nice I guess, but they did not make a difference for me since I would just use them to capture cities that I had bombed to zero and for that Lancers do just as well.
13. Was your UB helpful?
The UB, the Coffee House, is tremendous and this one alone makes Austria one of the strongest CiVs out there. First of all it can be built in cities that are placed on a Hill, and I like all of my cities on Hills and don’t know the last time I have come across a Windmill. But in addition it has a +5% Production bonus on everything (including Wonders and Units!) instead of +10% just on Buildings not to mention it has a +25% Bonus on Great People generation just like the Tower of Pisa or National epic. I actually bought the UB as soon as it became available for 1000g. in short:
one of the best if not the best UB out there.
